I’m a Chrome advocate who always recommends Google Chrome to friends. While most of them are attracted by the clean and easy-to-use user interface, fast speed and vast variety of Chrome extensions, some of them are still reluctant to try. The major reason is that they don’t want the hassle to migrate their existing data such as bookmarks from one browser to a new one.

In this article, I’ll show you how easy it is to switch from other browsers to Chrome. It is very easy that takes a few minutes only.

Exporting Bookmarks and Settings from Safari, Internet Explorer and Firefox

You will be brought to a pop up window asking you from which browser in your computer you want to import and what to import. Depending on the browser you used, you can import browsing history, bookmarks, saved passwords and search engines.

Import Bookmarks from Other Browsers

What if I do not use any of the above browsers? Well, you can still export bookmarks and import to Chrome.

Usually browsers have a function to export bookmarks. Run this to export your bookmarks into a HTML file. Then, go to Chrome, click the wrench icon, choose “Bookmarks” and then “Bookmark Manager”.

Similarly, you can export your bookmarks in Google Chrome to a HTML file and import in other browsers. How about transferring bookmarks among Chrome browsers on different computers? Well, you don’t have to. Simply choose to sync your data and every Chrome you use would have exactly the same bookmarks and settings! You can find this option by clicking the wrench icon > “Preference” (or Settings, Options… depending on the operation system your computer runs) > “Personal Stuff” > “Set Up Sync”.

Both Firefox and Chrome are popular browsers that have respective loyal users. I haven been a Firefox user for years before trying and falling in love with Chrome. Despite this, I did not give up Firefox. It’s still one of the best web browser in the world. None of them could beat the other, they are both great products. So, why do you need to stick to only one of them? Could we use both? Yes, we can, and this is in fact a good idea.

This post was written with the aim to guide long-time Firefox users to switch to Chrome. I wrote this article with reference to Firefox 4 and 5 and Chrome 12 on a Windows 7 PC.

The Transition

The first thing you should do is to download a copy of Chrome. It could be found at http://www.google.com/chrome/ with Mac, Linux and Windows versions. Follow the instructions to install it.

If for some reasons you cannot install it, e.g. you don’t have administrative rights (this is the case of my PC in office), you can try downloading from portableapps.com, a place where you could find the portable version of many popular applications. They usually do not require installation.

Once installed, the first thing you do is to transfer your data from Firefox to Chrome. Click the wrench icon on the top right corner, choose “Settings” or “Perferences”, find “Personal Stuff” on the left sidebar and select “Import Data from Another Browser”. From these you can ask Chrome to import your bookmarks, history, saved passwords and saved search engines from Firefox.